Martin Luther King Jr. Day to be observed with many events in Western Massachusetts

Photo by Michael S. Gordon / The RepublicanAttendees at a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebration and flag raising ceremony convened at Springfield City Hall at noon on Friday.

Community groups in the region will observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day Monday with events ranging from a dramatic performance in Sturbridge to a tour in Northampton and even an oratorical contest in Springfield.

Martin Luther King Jr. Family Services Inc. in conjunction with the Eastfield Mall in Springfield will once again host numerous programs from 10 a.m. to about 2 p.m. at the mall. The Springfield family services organization has organized community-wide events on Martin Luther King Jr. Day for many years.

The Springfield event will feature speakers throughout the day beginning with Mayor Domenic J. Sarno. There will be information about community resources and such creative expressions as an oratorical contest and an art contest embodying the basic tenets of King and the civil rights movement.

The emphasis will be on multiculturalism with such expressions of various ethnic traditions as the blowing of shofar, a replica of the ram’s horn blown when the Jews started their exodus from Egypt.

“This is the heart of what Dr. King stands for,” Peter T. Sylver, the president and the chief executive officer of the Martin Luther King Family Services, said about such multiculturalism.

If King were alive he would be “very pleased” to see such progress blacks have made in this country as electing Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, even though there is still a long way to go, Sylver said.

“I’m glad that people are too ashamed to use the n-word to my face. If they are thinking of it and not saying it that is progress,” Sylver said.

Also in Springfield, dancers from DREAM Studios will perform a tribute dance to the late civil rights leader and his wife Coretta Scott King by dancing to the tape of King’s I Have A Dream speech at Tower Square on Monday at 11 a.m. in Center Court inside Tower Square at 1500 Main St.

Following their performance, the dancers will lead a peace march to the Pan African Historical Museum (PAHMUSA) located on Tower Square’s upper retail level. At noon PAHMUSA will offer storytelling of King’s life. A book reading will be presented by Ayanna Crawford of the Black History Collaborative. LuJuana Hood, Executive Director of PAHMUSA, will then lead an educational tour of the PAHUMSA galleries and show a film on civil rights.

At Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, storyteller Tammy Denease will play Elizabeth “Mumbet” Freeman in a performance of “Honoring A Slave Heroine: The Mumbet Story.” Freeman was a young slave woman who won her freedom in a Massachusetts court in 1781 by citing the “All men are born free and equal” passage in the state constitution.

She will perform from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Performances are included the price of admission to the village. Admission is $20 for adults, $18 for seniors and free for children when accompanied by an adult.

In Northampton, the American Friends Service Committee will host its 27th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at Edwards Church. The theme will be “Preserving Our Civil Rights Today.” The celebration will be a kickoff of a regional campaign to keep intact the rights of everyone with regard to immigrants, federal agents raids on activists as well as to confront the legacy of racism in the United States.

Soloist Evelyn Harris will perform and a range of community organizers from Northampton to Hartford will speak about contemporary barriers to civil rights. The program will be sponsored by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

There will also be a 10 a.m. walking tour of historic spots in African-American history in the Florence section of Northampton including the Sojourner Truth Memorial Statue at Park and Pine streets.

Special emphasis will be on Florence’s involvement in the Underground Railroad and the homes of freed and escaped slaves. The walk begins at 10 a.m. in front of the Sojourner Truth statue on Pine Street.

Greenfield Community College will host a community event honoring King’s starting at 1 p.m. at Sloan Theater.

Bailey W. Jackson III, the former dean of the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts, will speak.